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It feels a bit odd for them to say, autopilot could not have been used in that area. "In a reconstruction using a similar Tesla, the agency found that Autostee

It feels a bit odd for them to say, autopilot could not have been used in that area. "In a reconstruction using a similar Tesla, the agency found that Autosteer was not usable on that part of the road, meaning the Autopilot system couldn't have worked." Whose to say that Tesla didn't update something between the crash and when the NTSB tested autopilot in that area? I don't think they did do that, but are there any safeguards in place to detect that happening? Its one thing to say that a car cannot do something because of a physical issue on the car, vs some software that can be updated or have bugs that haven't been caught yet.

babesh 5y ago
They used the same version of software.
- _underfl0w_ 5y ago
  Local software != map data, necessarily.
  - nickik 5y ago
    Tesla has version of map data, if they did their job they used the same version for both. Also, I don't think this feature actually uses map data.
igetspam 5y ago
My wife's truck has a lane guidance system. It will gladly keep you in a well marked lane. When there are no lines or bad lines it makes a loud ding and shows a big orange cancelation message on the dash display. This is a current year F150. I can only imagine Tesla has at least as good a system as Ford. As for updates, the infotainment system has a record of the last check-in and the last update, as well as the current systems version, similar to your phone or computer. With the number of Tesla hackers out there, it seems nearly impossible for the conspiracy you're suggesting to be a reality.
- ballenf 5y ago
  On the other hand wouldn’t Tesla be irresponsible if it didn’t manually review sections of road involved in a crash and perhaps override the settings if automated systems had made bad calls? Can you imagine a second wreck on that same stretch of road and the accusations against Tesla for not doing the manual review envisioned above? Have Tesla said definitively that they cannot override capabilities without updating the version number?
  - nexuist 5y ago
    I think manual review might actually be the worst way to solve this problem, because you're relying on human labor to fix every single hiccup, which ruins the point of an automated system anyways. I think for sure they run the route through a bunch of simulations to tune the ML mode, but I seriously doubt they would go as low-level as using telemetry to disable certain features by hand. The best solution would be updating the model so that it makes the right calls on the right type of road - so that when it encounters a similar road, you don't need to wait for another fatal accident before kicking the review process into gear and making the necessary changes again. tl;dr it doesn't scale and would be a logistical nightmare to maintain individual configurations for every road the system struggles on
    - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
      Of course it would not solve the issue in a generic way. To me, the reasonable fix would be to immediately disable the feature in the specific area manually and then retrain the model or whatever it is they do.
- Thorrez 5y ago
  >it seems nearly impossible for the conspiracy you're suggesting to be a reality. What conspiracy? majormunky is saying Tesla might push out updates every so often, and that might effect whether autopilot can be used, and the investigators might not have realized that.
  - 5y ago
jsight 5y ago
It was reported that the versions are the same.
senectus1 5y ago
also just because the driver was in the driver seat at the time of being on camera doesn't preclude some sort of stupid behavior like leaving the driver seat while on "autopilot"
ajross 5y ago
This point feels a little strained. There is a question: "Was autopilot in use?", and an experiment was performed to answer that question, which produced an informative result, which was reported. You seem to be attacking the linguistic structure of the statement by interpreting "coudn't" to mean some kind of existentially inviolate truth and not just... the result of the experiment. I mean, come on. This is what people were saying within hours after the crash: autopilot as shipped simply doesn't have behavior consistent with this accident. It won't command the accelerations that would have been required on that tiny street and (as measured by the NTSB) won't even engage in that particular environment.
- breakyerself 5y ago
  My car has never allowed AP to be engaged on roads without lines painted on it. There was no update that took that functionality away.
  - JPKab 5y ago
    Yes this is true. Basically every Tesla owner that saw the story knew right away that it was being sensationalized. I was very surprised to see the LA times jump on it when they certainly have numerous employees that drive these vehicles.
    - 2rsf 5y ago
      It is sensationalized, but it could have a bug and not a designed behavior. This could have been a software bug or a rare combination with hardware or environment conditions.
      - brianwawok 5y ago
        Great, so the bug would need to be proven. A newspaper can't decide what happened the day of the crash with no evidence.
  - 2rsf 5y ago
    > My car has never allowed That is an anecdotal result > There was no update that took that functionality away Maybe not explicitly, but we all know how software works
ffhhj 5y ago
Also, they shouldn't need to reconstruct the issue, there should be a black box recording all the events.
- davidgould 5y ago
  According to the article, the main storage aka black box was destroyed in the fire. They are trying to pull data from a secondary controller that was less damaged.
cookiengineer 5y ago
All facts aside, people are still required to be in control of their cars and need to be legally able to intervene. "But I used autopilot" is probably the most used excuse to avert fault away from the driver. Especially in the most broken insurance system on the planet where an accident like this leads to such a change in life that the driver is scared of the outcome.
- notatoad 5y ago
  my understanding is that whether autopilot is in use or not has no bearing on your insurance. as far as the insurance company is concerned, it's an accident while you're responsible for the operation of the car.
  - sircastor 5y ago
    I’ve heard that the presence of Autopilot is actually viewed negatively by insurers. This goes against intuition-wouldn’t a machine that behaves very reliably be better than a human driver - but my dad used to say that the insurance company’s calculation was only ever about how likely they thought they could win if they sued the other party. I don’t know if that’s true, but something rings true about it.
    - inopinatus 5y ago
      From an actuarial perspective, all forms of driver assistance contain the potential for moral hazard.
    - brianwawok 5y ago
      My insurance rates are the "same" as a similarly priced Audi or such. As Teslas are safer over time, one would expect rates to gradually go down. Some repairs are a bit more expensive, so could be a bit of a balancing act.
      - cookiengineer 5y ago
        > As Teslas are safer over time, one would expect rates to gradually go down. In Germany it's currently the opposite due to the overly high amount of Teslas that are declared as total damage because the auditors that work for insurers usually don't know that their frames can be partially replaced. Additionally there's no availability to repair a Tesla in practice at that point, but the given software lockout policy of Tesla is a different story.
ec109685 5y ago
Elon also said that the vehicle didn’t even purchase full self driving capabilities.
- vinay427 5y ago
  Autopilot also includes the less-capable levels, not just FSD. For example, Enhanced Autopilot uses Autosteer and TACC which are both mentioned in the article.
- lottin 5y ago
  > Elon also said A man who uses his celebrity status to pump cryptocurrencies in order to enrich himself and the companies he owns has no moral standards and no credibility.
  - concordDance 5y ago
    Even if he was pumping crypto, that doesn't mean he has no morals or that he would lie about technical details, particularly where he can be easily found out.
    - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
      Hah, the more evil version of billionaire dodgy car salesman would have a database script to modify the purchase order to retroactively remove that item. "Self-drive? Our records say he never bought it!".
    - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
      To be clear, are you referring to the guy in the company selling cars claiming that the current models sold today will be fully autonomous with only software patches?
  - brianwawok 5y ago
    Might be worth a read on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem Doesn't matter what you think of the character, it has nothing to do with this instance.
zik 5y ago
The article says that it couldn't have been in autopilot because autopilot requires lane markings for it to be activated and that area has no lane markings. It's nothing to do with software versions.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
  Is there any possibility for bugs caused by errors in the software or hardware?
  - Retric 5y ago
    Not a statistically meaningful possibility. If someone suffocates you don’t assume all the oxygen in the room just happened to randomly end up away from their face.
    - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
      Do you have a source for that statistics? I have seen bugs in my Tesla but never had the oxygen issue happen. This is just anecdotal of course, but I suspect your comparison is off.
      - Retric 5y ago
        Sure, but the existence of individual bugs is very different that picking a very specific bug. It’s the same as assuming that because someone regularly wins the lottery a specific ticket must have good odds. The space of all possible bugs is so vast, if the odds of every possible bug where as high as a lottery ticket then the software would be unusable. Some bugs are of course more likely than others, but assuming this one is more likely than average requires justification.
jiofih 5y ago
TL;DR let’s ignore the regulatory agency report, that confirms what literally everybody was saying, they are also being fooled. Tesla evil hurr durr.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

babesh 5y ago

They used the same version of software.

_underfl0w_ 5y ago
Local software != map data, necessarily.
- nickik 5y ago
  Tesla has version of map data, if they did their job they used the same version for both. Also, I don't think this feature actually uses map data.

igetspam 5y ago

My wife's truck has a lane guidance system. It will gladly keep you in a well marked lane. When there are no lines or bad lines it makes a loud ding and shows a big orange cancelation message on the dash display. This is a current year F150. I can only imagine Tesla has at least as good a system as Ford. As for updates, the infotainment system has a record of the last check-in and the last update, as well as the current systems version, similar to your phone or computer. With the number of Tesla hackers out there, it seems nearly impossible for the conspiracy you're suggesting to be a reality.

ballenf 5y ago
On the other hand wouldn’t Tesla be irresponsible if it didn’t manually review sections of road involved in a crash and perhaps override the settings if automated systems had made bad calls? Can you imagine a second wreck on that same stretch of road and the accusations against Tesla for not doing the manual review envisioned above? Have Tesla said definitively that they cannot override capabilities without updating the version number?
- nexuist 5y ago
  I think manual review might actually be the worst way to solve this problem, because you're relying on human labor to fix every single hiccup, which ruins the point of an automated system anyways. I think for sure they run the route through a bunch of simulations to tune the ML mode, but I seriously doubt they would go as low-level as using telemetry to disable certain features by hand. The best solution would be updating the model so that it makes the right calls on the right type of road - so that when it encounters a similar road, you don't need to wait for another fatal accident before kicking the review process into gear and making the necessary changes again. tl;dr it doesn't scale and would be a logistical nightmare to maintain individual configurations for every road the system struggles on
  - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
    Of course it would not solve the issue in a generic way. To me, the reasonable fix would be to immediately disable the feature in the specific area manually and then retrain the model or whatever it is they do.
Thorrez 5y ago
>it seems nearly impossible for the conspiracy you're suggesting to be a reality. What conspiracy? majormunky is saying Tesla might push out updates every so often, and that might effect whether autopilot can be used, and the investigators might not have realized that.
- 5y ago

jsight 5y ago

It was reported that the versions are the same.

senectus1 5y ago

also just because the driver was in the driver seat at the time of being on camera doesn't preclude some sort of stupid behavior like leaving the driver seat while on "autopilot"

ajross 5y ago

This point feels a little strained. There is a question: "Was autopilot in use?", and an experiment was performed to answer that question, which produced an informative result, which was reported. You seem to be attacking the linguistic structure of the statement by interpreting "coudn't" to mean some kind of existentially inviolate truth and not just... the result of the experiment. I mean, come on. This is what people were saying within hours after the crash: autopilot as shipped simply doesn't have behavior consistent with this accident. It won't command the accelerations that would have been required on that tiny street and (as measured by the NTSB) won't even engage in that particular environment.

breakyerself 5y ago
My car has never allowed AP to be engaged on roads without lines painted on it. There was no update that took that functionality away.
- JPKab 5y ago
  Yes this is true. Basically every Tesla owner that saw the story knew right away that it was being sensationalized. I was very surprised to see the LA times jump on it when they certainly have numerous employees that drive these vehicles.
  - 2rsf 5y ago
    It is sensationalized, but it could have a bug and not a designed behavior. This could have been a software bug or a rare combination with hardware or environment conditions.
    - brianwawok 5y ago
      Great, so the bug would need to be proven. A newspaper can't decide what happened the day of the crash with no evidence.
- 2rsf 5y ago
  > My car has never allowed That is an anecdotal result > There was no update that took that functionality away Maybe not explicitly, but we all know how software works

ffhhj 5y ago

Also, they shouldn't need to reconstruct the issue, there should be a black box recording all the events.

davidgould 5y ago
According to the article, the main storage aka black box was destroyed in the fire. They are trying to pull data from a secondary controller that was less damaged.

cookiengineer 5y ago

All facts aside, people are still required to be in control of their cars and need to be legally able to intervene. "But I used autopilot" is probably the most used excuse to avert fault away from the driver. Especially in the most broken insurance system on the planet where an accident like this leads to such a change in life that the driver is scared of the outcome.

notatoad 5y ago
my understanding is that whether autopilot is in use or not has no bearing on your insurance. as far as the insurance company is concerned, it's an accident while you're responsible for the operation of the car.
- sircastor 5y ago
  I’ve heard that the presence of Autopilot is actually viewed negatively by insurers. This goes against intuition-wouldn’t a machine that behaves very reliably be better than a human driver - but my dad used to say that the insurance company’s calculation was only ever about how likely they thought they could win if they sued the other party. I don’t know if that’s true, but something rings true about it.
  - inopinatus 5y ago
    From an actuarial perspective, all forms of driver assistance contain the potential for moral hazard.
  - brianwawok 5y ago
    My insurance rates are the "same" as a similarly priced Audi or such. As Teslas are safer over time, one would expect rates to gradually go down. Some repairs are a bit more expensive, so could be a bit of a balancing act.
    - cookiengineer 5y ago
      > As Teslas are safer over time, one would expect rates to gradually go down. In Germany it's currently the opposite due to the overly high amount of Teslas that are declared as total damage because the auditors that work for insurers usually don't know that their frames can be partially replaced. Additionally there's no availability to repair a Tesla in practice at that point, but the given software lockout policy of Tesla is a different story.

ec109685 5y ago

Elon also said that the vehicle didn’t even purchase full self driving capabilities.

vinay427 5y ago
Autopilot also includes the less-capable levels, not just FSD. For example, Enhanced Autopilot uses Autosteer and TACC which are both mentioned in the article.
lottin 5y ago
> Elon also said A man who uses his celebrity status to pump cryptocurrencies in order to enrich himself and the companies he owns has no moral standards and no credibility.
- concordDance 5y ago
  Even if he was pumping crypto, that doesn't mean he has no morals or that he would lie about technical details, particularly where he can be easily found out.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    Hah, the more evil version of billionaire dodgy car salesman would have a database script to modify the purchase order to retroactively remove that item. "Self-drive? Our records say he never bought it!".
  - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
    To be clear, are you referring to the guy in the company selling cars claiming that the current models sold today will be fully autonomous with only software patches?
- brianwawok 5y ago
  Might be worth a read on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem Doesn't matter what you think of the character, it has nothing to do with this instance.

zik 5y ago

The article says that it couldn't have been in autopilot because autopilot requires lane markings for it to be activated and that area has no lane markings. It's nothing to do with software versions.

tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
Is there any possibility for bugs caused by errors in the software or hardware?
- Retric 5y ago
  Not a statistically meaningful possibility. If someone suffocates you don’t assume all the oxygen in the room just happened to randomly end up away from their face.
  - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
    Do you have a source for that statistics? I have seen bugs in my Tesla but never had the oxygen issue happen. This is just anecdotal of course, but I suspect your comparison is off.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Sure, but the existence of individual bugs is very different that picking a very specific bug. It’s the same as assuming that because someone regularly wins the lottery a specific ticket must have good odds. The space of all possible bugs is so vast, if the odds of every possible bug where as high as a lottery ticket then the software would be unusable. Some bugs are of course more likely than others, but assuming this one is more likely than average requires justification.

jiofih 5y ago

TL;DR let’s ignore the regulatory agency report, that confirms what literally everybody was saying, they are also being fooled. Tesla evil hurr durr.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]